Need help with how to change rights on a network Laptop

I have a Dell 700 Inspirion Laptop that is company issue. My rights are limited to user and as such can not download anything when logged into the company domain. However there is a local laptop domain, not associated with the network that I would like to change my user rights to admin or some level that will allow downloads, etc. Anyone have insight into how this is done if I don't have admin rights on either account right now. Is there a program that I could purchase that would do this?

Like theres not a valid reason for having certain rights on company PCs!!! lol...we have a few PC's at work that are wide open. I can't tell you how many times I get complaints..."my PC is running very slow, I'm getting this error message"...etc. etc... Only to find out they have downloaded some crap toolbar or screen saver program and the PC is FULL of temp files, spyware, adware etc.

I know it sounds lame. But a company has to protect their investments.

Our company gives employees with laptops admin rights, but they do run into many problems. The employee is responsible for backing up their own data and so if you bring in your laptop and it's not working because of something you did, they just erase the drive and reimage it back to day one and your own files you had on there will be gone too. happens a lot. My brother works for a company and I don't know how they have it set up, but it checks your rights if your own their network and he says that somehow it changes your rights back to a regular account if it detects that your an admin. I'm not sure how that works, and I'd like to see that in person. Anyway, I'm sure they do sell progams that can reset admin passwords, but I would advise against it. Usually the company keeps the administrator password a standard so if you get locked out they can log on as admin and reset your password. But if you change the admin password and then get locked out then your LAN support guy won't be able to help anymore since he won't be able to get in with his standard password. You'll proabably end up getting into trouble, and they will probably do what my company does- just reimage it which will erase all your work files on that drive. I would advise against it. Also if you do have to bring it in to be serviced it won't take them long to figure out you've been hacking the system. You should just pick up a laptop for yourself.

i appreciate your feedback. while i am aware of the need to limit corporate exposure via laptops, the non-admin status presents problems when, for example you have an email that is win-zipped, and i can't download winzip to be able to open the file. Usually the biggest issue is the inability to prepare powerpoint presentations and print them at Kinko's or whereever while on the road the night before a presentation. The system is locked down so that you can not download or upload anything.

Using vmware to establish a virtual PC in your PC will generate a computer you can manage and download to. It will boot in a virtual space on your PC and if your company uses DHCP to allocate addresses (mnost do) it will gain it's own IP address. You will be unable to access company shares from this virtual PC because it's not part of the corporate domain, but you should be able to get out to the internet. The other good thing is that any possible viruses and what not you might get are constrained to this virtual PC and will not impact your normal work PC.